Leaky Brain

Before we talk about the solutions to Leaky Gut in part 2 of the series, let’s talk about Leaky Brain.

What is a Leaky Brain?

Leaky Brain refers to a malfunction in what’s called the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB). The BBB consists of specialized cells that form a chemical and physical barrier between the blood and the brain. It keeps toxins and microbes that might be present in the blood from coming in contact with the brain cells.

Just as the gut could be said to be a barrier between your food and the bloodstream, the BBB is a barrier between the bloodstream and the brain.

The BBB can microscopically break down similar to the gut. Just like a Leaky Gut allows undigested foods to enter the bloodstream, a Leaky Brain allows toxins, microbes, or other unwanted substances to affect or even damage the brain.

What are the symptoms of a Leaky Brain?

Poor memory, foggy thinking, fatigue, moodiness, insomnia, random aches and pains, to name a few.

How do I know if I have a Leaky Brain?

It’s hard to know, but one way is with the GABA test. GABA is a neurotransmitter made in the brain that helps calm the brain. GABA does not cross the BBB. There are over-the-counter supplements containing GABA that people take to help them relax. But since GABA doesn’t cross the BBB, it actually shouldn’t work because it shouldn’t be able to reach your brain. So one test for a Leaky Brain is to take a GABA pill three times a day and see if you notice any calming effects. If you do, we assume that the only way it could have worked is if your BBB was damaged enough to let the GABA reach your brain.

What causes a Leaky Brain?

A Leaky Gut causes a Leaky Brain. Why? Because when undigested whole food particles, microbes, and toxins are entering the bloodstream via the microscopic holes in the gut, they end up damaging the BBB too. Over time, the damage to the BBB turns into a Leaky Brain.

How can I fix a Leaky Brain?

Fix the Leaky Gut and usually the Leaky Brain goes away automatically because the source of the inflammation and irritation to the BBB has been corrected. In the next article “Leaky Gut 2” I will write about how to fix a Leaky Gut.

Looking Forward!

Yours in health,

Dr.Campise : )

559 930 1034

Leaky Gut Part 1: signs, symptoms, and consequences

What do autoimmune diseases, digestive distress, chronic body pain and inflammation, headaches, insomnia, anxiety, depression, foggy brain, poor memory, chronic recurring infections, and fatigue have in common? Often the common denominator is something called “Leaky Gut.”

What is Leaky Gut?

It's microscopic holes in the intestinal lining that allow undigested food particles to enter the blood stream. Leaky Gut happens when your intestines have become so inflamed that the intestinal lining can't repair fast enough the daily damage sustained from your food passing through.

Why is this bad?

When whole food proteins enter the bloodstream via a leaky gut, the immune system identifies these as foreign proteins and assumes they must be pathogens. It then begins to attack your food. Talk about a waste of energy! When this goes on long enough it can lead to the immune system attacking your own body tissues and an autoimmune disease ensues.

The immune system kills pathogens when it finds them. It finds them by looking for the foreign proteins that make up the structure of the pathogens. Food comes from foreign plants and animals and so has foreign proteins in their cellular structure. The gut is supposed to break these proteins down into the building blocks called amino acids. The body then uses these amino acids to build uniquely human proteins to repair our own cells. When the immune system is busy attacking your food and your own body, it often can get distracted from it's real job, fighting foreign microbes.

The biggest side effect of too much immune activity (attacking food and self) is lots of unnecessary inflammation. Inflammation leads to the symptoms listed above: headaches, pain, insomnia, foggy brain, and so on.

So what causes the inflammation in the gut that leads to the leaky gut in the first place?

Almost always, gluten from bread and pasta products and casein from dairy products is the culprit. Gluten and casein are proteins that irritate the gut in some people. Depending on how sensitive you are and depending on the amount of these products you eat daily, you could develop a Leaky Gut from eating dairy and wheat laden foods.

Is it possible to have Leaky Gut but not have an autoimmune disease?

Yes. Some people never get an autoimmune disease from Leaky Gut, they just feel unhealthy in some way: tired, depressed, achy, and so on. Having an inflamed intestine doesn't always cause abdominal pain or discomfort, it may not even cause indigestion. But the inflammatory chemicals released by the immune system in your gut spill into the blood circulation causing low grade chronic inflammation anywhere in the body. If it's in your brain, then you may not have any symptoms other than just “feeling not quite right.”

I only have wrist pain, but otherwise I feel fine. Can this be from Leaky Gut?

In the case of localized pain, as in a single wrist, usually physical dysfunction causes this, not Leaky Gut. That being said, Leaky Gut will increase the amount of inflammation in a physical injury site, delaying its recovery. So even if there is a known injury, let's say a fall where the wrist is sprained, but the wrist doesn't heal in the usual six weeks time, this could be a sign of delayed healing due to excess inflammation from a Leaky Gut.

How do I know if I have Leaky Gut or not?

Blood tests can diagnose you with gluten or casein intolerances but they are not 100% accurate. Stool tests can identify certain markers for Leaky Gut, but sometimes they are absent even though you have it. The best way to know if you have Leaky Gut is to avoid all dairy and all grains for three weeks. I call this the three week test. Keep a symptom journal each day for a week before during and after the 3 week test. Then continue tracking symptoms while reintroducing these foods one at a time. If you have substantially less symptoms (at least a 25% improvement) by the end of the three weeks off, and then they return after reintroducing them, you likely have Leaky Gut. At a minimum you have an allergy to wheat or dairy.

Could it be only gluten or only dairy that I need to avoid?

Yes, but generally those who are sensitive to one are sensitive to the other at least slightly, and so it's best to avoid both for 6-12 months while your gut heals.

More on this in part 2…. stay tuned!

Shoulder, elbow, and wrist pain: the missing link

Anyone who suffers from chronic shoulder, elbow, or wrist pain knows how it makes you feel: it’s like you’ve lost half your body.

Often certain positions will allow you to avoid pain, but move just a fraction of an inch the wrong way and the pain returns. After days of babying the joint the pain can subside, only to forget and use the arm for something you shouldn’t and the pain returns.

The maddening part is that there often isn’t any one major injury to point to as the cause. The medical doctor says that it was caused by over use: just take pain relievers and anti-inflammatory drugs or cortisone shots and then wait. He might say to wear joint braces while you sleep or during repetitive tasks. But often nothing seems to make it go away.

Medical imaging of the joint usually shows that nothing is wrong. Years later imaging may show a small tear or an inflamed nerve, “requiring” surgical intervention. Often even this doesn’t really completely make it go away. The nagging pain keeps you from sleeping at night. You start to think that maybe this is just what happens when you get old.

Not so fast. You don’t have to live this way.

The missing link 99% of the time is an irritated nerve in the neck from a jammed facet joint, or more commonly from a bulging disc called a hidden cervical disc (HCD). It’s called “Hidden” because most of the time there is no neck pain, just arm pain. Sometimes medical imaging of the neck will find the bad disc, but often it is missed on the imaging because they only scan you when you are lying down in a neutral posture. Were they to scan your neck while in varying positions, while lift, pulling, pushing, walking, or bending, they might see it encroaching on the nerve space.

The astute practitioner will be able to find a pattern of weakness upon examination in the muscles around your affected joints and trace it back to the specific nerve in the neck that is being affected. A surgeon may want to do surgery if he can find something on the imaging. But with correct chiropractic treatment to the neck, the nerve irritation can be alleviated after a series of treatments. Often the muscle strength will return before the pain is gone, which is a sign that the treatment is beginning to work.

Sometimes, additionally, the weak muscles will need to have specific digital pressure where they attach to the bone in order to speed up their recovery. The treatment to the neck is generally painless, but if needed, the treatment to the shoulder muscles can be sharply painful, but the treatment pain subsides immediately along with improved range of motion.

Once the nerve is freed up to function normally, then the muscles around the affected joint can enable the joint to track correctly during daily activities. Now that the proper function is returned, movement begins to make it feel better rather than worse.

When the pain has been there for years, often there can be layers of stuck emotional tension built up that needs to be released with the NET and homeopathic treatments (netmindbody.com). And if your diet isn’t perfect, then anti-inflammatory supplements may be needed temporarily to speed up the healing.

To recap:

Shoulder, elbow, and wrist problems are almost always caused by a hidden neck problem. Fix the neck and the arm problem goes away. Surgery is almost never needed when proper chiropractic neck treatment is given.

Kids Vits

What supplements my kids should be taking. 

Firstly, focus on a whole food diet void of junk food. Junk food can be rated on a scale from slightly bad to very bad, but any processed food can be considered junk food. Sugar and fried foods are very bad for you foods, brown rice and noodles are slightly bad for you foods. So put most of your efforts into keeping your kids away from the worst offenders. But if they have any health conditions like asthma, allergies, chronic ear infections, acne, and so on, then a completely strict whole food diet is a necessary step in the healing of these conditions. (Inhalers, medications, and antibiotics don't heal these conditions, they only put out the fire until the next flare-up.) Cutting out all junk foods and eating only whole unprocessed foods can often clear up such conditions for good. If you think this is too difficult, then find a support group. There are hundreds of them full of parents in your situation, many of whom have been successful. You can flatten the learning curve by getting or reading the advice of these parents. Many of these groups can be found online.

If your kids don't eat a completely whole food, non-processed diet, then they certainly will need to take supplements to make up some of the difference. But even if your kids eat a “perfect” diet, they will still need the following supplements.

1) Vitamin D: This comes from sunshine close to noon on bare skin without sunscreen or, from wild fatty fish. If your kid is eating wild salmon 2x daily or is sunbathing in the nude for 20-40 minutes at noon each day, then no Vitamin D supplement is needed. Otherwise, in general here's how much D they need:

Age 0-2 = 1,000 iu daily
Age 2-12 = 2,000 iu daily
Age 13-18 = 3,000 – 4,000 iu daily depending on body size

For extra credit: Before vaccines (should you chose to use them) and during cold and flu season they can take a double dose daily for 7 days to boost the immune system. When taking extra D, give some extra vitamin A with it. If the child is eating mostly whole foods including lots of and a wide variety of greens and veggies, then they get plenty of A from these during the off season. But when you double the D to boost their immunity, give them vitamin A at 50% the level of D. So for a 4 year old getting a vaccine next week, increase both his D to 4,000 and add in 2,000 iu of A for 7 days prior to the vaccine. Or if he is exposed to a friend with a bad flu, do the same thing except do it for 7 days after the exposure. And of course, if your child comes down with the flu, increase to these levels during the course of the bug.

Breast Feeding moms: Vitamin D typically is not part of human breast milk. But not because it's naturally absent, but because the mom has low levels of vitamin D. Studies show that the mom has to have blood levels around 60 ng/ml in order to have enough vitamin D in the breast milk. They also show that unless mom is taking 8,000 iu daily of a vitamin D supplement, she won't reach the necessary levels for D to spill over into the milk. I recommend that mom's take a minimum of 8,000 iu of Vitamin D daily throughout the entire pregnancy and nursing years. And, to be completely responsible, she needs to check her blood levels of D twice yearly to make sure that she is in the 60-80 ng/ml range.

2) Omega 3: This comes from wild fatty fish, some seeds like flax and chia, and certain animal tissues from wild game. So again, no one eats this twice daily. So instead we all need to take an omega 3 supplement for optimal health. The most important time to supplement with this is when we are in the womb and developing through childhood.

Age 0-2 = 300 mg
Age 2-12 = 600 mg
Age 12-18 = 900-2000 depending on body size.

Warning!!!: DO NOT TAKE RANCID OMEGA 3 OIL! Many brands on the market are partially rancid, taking rancid omega 3 is worse than taking no omega 3. The solution is to make sure you give your kids high quality omega 3 supplements. In my experience, Nordic Naturals brand is never rancid. You can find these at my office or at most health food stores or even on Amazon.com.

Extra credit: Omega 3, like vitamin D and A, can be increased for 7 days before or after known immune stressing events like vaccines and illnesses. Vitamin D and A help to increase the immune action of the body, while omega 3 helps to keep the immune action from going up too high. Allergies are an example of an immune system that in some ways is over active. Omega 3 deficiency (along with junk food) is often the culprit in childhood seasonal allergies.

Pregnant and nursing moms: Omega 3 is essential for the developing fetus and nursing infant. Mom's need to take 2,000 mg of omega 3 daily during pregnancy and breast feeding years to make sure that baby gets enough from mom.

3) Iodine: This is rarely deficient in the American junk food diet simply because salt sold in the US has iodine added to it. But just because you aren't “deficient” in a nutrient doesn't mean that you have “sufficient” levels of the nutrient for optimal health and performance. Also, just because you ingest your daily minimum of iodine, doesn't mean that it is doing its job once inside the body. There are three toxins, bromide, flouride, and chlorine that interfere with your body's ability to utilize iodine. One or more of these three toxins are found in our water, our dental products, and just about anything made from petroleum or plastic in the case of bromide. It's impossible, and in the case of plastics even undesirable, to avoid these toxins completely, so the antidote is to ingest higher amounts of iodine. Iodine cannot build up to toxic levels in the body so it's difficult to overdose with it.

Ages 0-2 = 50 mcg daily
Ages 2-12 = 100 mcg daily
Ages 12-18 = 150 to 300 mcg daily depending on body size

Extra Credit: Similar to D, A, and omega 3, iodine helps the immune system to kill microbes. Iodine by itself is an antiseptic as you know. Before, during, or after a known immune exposure or event like a vaccine or flu, increase the daily dosage of iodine up to 100 times the doses listed above. The way you can tell you have dosed them high enough is that their mucus is thinner, even watery. Thick mucus, either in the lung, sinus, throat, or even stool, is usually a sign of a need for temporary high doses of iodine. Iodine stimulates the mucus thinning enzyme call mucinase. It's the same enzyme that the drug “Mucinex” stimulates. Iodine works better and usually corrects the cause of the thick mucus in the first place. Thick mucus can also be a result of a dairy sensitivity or dairy allergy. Cutting out the dairy for 2 weeks will correct the thick mucus issue if it is the cause. But if no dairy allergy, then increase iodine intake for overly thick mucus.

But don't use the red iodine that you can paint on your skin. This can burn the skin in some kids. And it is not intended to be used orally. Instead use “Liquid Iodine” by Biotics. I carry this at my office but sometimes you can find it illegally on Amazon.com. It is a food grade iodine that is safe and effective for kids and adults, can be used internally or topically. I use it topically for cuts as an antiseptic and for any skin infections like acne or fungus laden toe nails.

One failure of chiropractors

One specific failure of the chiropractic profession   

**Note to chiropractors: In keeping with the study referenced below, in this article I will refer to the body of the vertebra when discussing vertebral segment rotation, not to the spinous process like we were taught in school.**

A chiropractor is a specialist in the treatment of spinal dysfunction. If the joints within your spine are not moving correctly, a chiropractor should be the expert of choice. The spine is the main focus of his study.

Yet, strangely, there is a fundamental mistake being made by most chiropractors when they treat the neck for vertebral motion dysfunction.

According to this published review, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16949947, the cervical spine normally moves in what’s called a coupled way. This means that not only do cervical vertebrae tilt in the direction of head tilt, but they rotate simultaneously. But they don’t rotate randomly, they rotate in a very specific direction.

For example, when you tilt your head to the right, the vertebrae also rotate to the right at the same time. When tilting left, they rotate left. They never rotate away from the side of tilt. You could say they always go the same direction. This is called “coupled motion” since the two motions always occur together.

But for those of you who have been to a chiropractor before, you might remember how he “popped” your neck. As you are lying on your back, facing up, the chiropractor takes your head and neck, he puts your right ear toward your right shoulder, and then he rotates your head to the left as he “pops” it. Remember? Close your eyes and picture what position your head is in when he treats your neck. Head toward the shoulder and then the chin toward the opposite shoulder. Yes? Hmm.

Those having received lots of neck treatments might learn that the treatment relieves pain but often only for a short time. So some patients learn how to “pop” their own necks (not advisable). What do they do? They mimic what the chiropractor did: tilt the ear toward the shoulder and twist the chin to the opposite side. If you don’t do this (which you shouldn’t), you may have seen other people doing it, using a hand on the chin to twist the neck into that unnatural position until it pops.

But the neck naturally rotates to the same side, not the opposite, as mentioned in the above paper. So the chiropractor essentially treats the neck in a way that is completely opposite to normal motion. This has been called “uncoupled motion,” because it’s inducing an unnatural pairing of motions.

Okay, fine, it’s backwards, who cares? Well, sadly, there aren’t enough good studies to know for sure much of anything about “alternative” treatments like chiropractic. So we’ll have to look at it from a philosophical and a clinical perspective.

During a chiropractic treatment of the neck, there are at least two things going on. One is the cavitation of the joint, this is what makes the “pop” sound. Another is the resetting of the tone of the muscles surrounding the joint, this is what makes the neck tension go away. Both have benefits to the patient.

Chiropractors could argue that the popping of the joint using an uncoupled versus coupled motion makes little difference to the joint itself, and they might have a point. But it’s harder to argue for this when discussing the resetting of the muscles around the joint because this “resetting” is accomplished through neurological pathways from the joint and muscle stretch receptors firing into the spinal cord and up to the brain.

These neurological signals from the treatment stimulate spinal cord reflexes, and brain relay centers, all of which help regulate the tone and sensitivity of the neck muscles. In this way, the chiropractic treatment of the neck could be said to be “teaching” the muscles something, usually to be more relaxed, if not more responsive to head motion (hopefully in a good way).

If one goal of the treatment is “teaching” the neck muscles how to move normally again, then why would the chiropractor “pop” your neck by using uncoupled motion? You are right, it makes no sense. It would make more sense to treat the neck using coupled motion.

Clinically I have noticed that those patients with the worst neck dysfunction, in general, tend to be the ones who have had the most chiropractic treatments to their necks in the past. This could be a coincidence, perhaps those with bad necks go to the chiropractor the most because they need it the most?

I think that the uncoupled chiropractic treatment can be somewhat helpful to the joints of the neck in the short run, but over time these uncoupled motion treatments begin to confuse the nervous system causing long term joint dysfunction. In other words, the joints aren’t tracking correctly, over time causing joint inflammation and perhaps degeneration. To be fair, it may have been a physical injury, like a car accident, that caused the abnormal neck motion in the first place, and perhaps the chiropractic uncoupled motion treatment didn’t cause it. But it seems to at least have not fixed the motion either.

I do see plenty of patients who have never seen a chiropractor before, and many of them also have poor neck motion (almost always having a clear history of neck trauma). But they tend to need fewer coupled neck treatments to correct the issue than those patients with a long history of chiropractic uncoupled neck treatments. Like a lot less.

The sad state of affairs is that to the best of my knowledge, every chiropractic college teaches only the uncoupled neck treatments. Of course they don’t call them that, nor do they acknowledge such a thing exists. And certainly there isn’t tons of scientific knowledge on this topic, but there isn’t a ton of it on most everything else chiropractic does either. A lack of scientific studies has never stopped the colleges from theorizing before.

There used to be a post-graduate program that taught chiropractors how to perform coupled neck treatments. The post-grad teachers asked some of the undergrad chiropractic colleges to allow them to teach this better method to the undergrad students, but the colleges refused, essentially saying that there was nothing wrong with the old way of doing it.

From what I’ve heard, this post-grad school has now stopped teaching the correct coupled motion neck treatments even to post-grad students. Unfortunately, for a chiropractor to change his neck treatments from uncoupled to coupled, it’s not as simple as just reading this article. It’s like learning how to ride a bike. You can’t learn it by reading about it, you have to fail at it over and over until you get it right. Most established chiropractors don’t want to go through the effort, and even if they did, they need a teacher to help them just like they did when they first learned the traditional uncoupled treatments at school.

There are perhaps some ways around this. The chiropractor could use a mechanical device like an “activator,” making sure to position the head in lateral flexion together with chin rotation to the same side when using it, or keeping the head in neutral. He could employ any of the hundreds of “non-force” chiropractic treatments. Or he could stick to any neck treatments he already knows how to do where the head is in a neutral position. But bad habits die hard.

I have been fortunate enough to have learned coupled motion neck treatments from one of the best. Unfortunately he is a dying breed, and he doesn’t teach anymore. The results I have observed from using coupled neck treatments compared to the traditional uncoupled treatments are profound.

The human neck is unique among all animal necks on the planet. It allows us to walk upright, and some might argue that the specialized human neck allows us to have a human brain in the first place. When the neck segments move correctly, our standing posture improves effortlessly, and all the other joints of the body are allowed to align and move properly too. Clinically, I see improved posture and walking motion immediately after resetting patients’ necks with coupled motion treatments. I see this every day at my clinic. I never saw this when I was using uncoupled treatments at the chiropractic college.

At best, I would say that an uncoupled neck treatment takes pain out of the neck for a time. At worst, it creates never ending spinal dysfunction, or at least perpetuates the dysfunction that was already there. By contrast, a coupled neck treatment at worst relieves neck pain, and at best allows us to be more fully human.